Global Innovation Race Tightening, EU Finds

The innovation gap between Europe and the U.S. is shrinking by several measures, according to the latest benchmarking study from the European Union (EU). The size of the gap remains significant, however, due in part to factors such as an increasing public R&D intensity in the U.S. and a decreasing public R&D intensity in the EU.

 

The European Innovation Scoreboard 2007 examines the 27 EU member states, in addition to Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, the U.S., Australia, Canada and Israel. Prepared by the United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research and Training Centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), Scoreboard 2007 compares these countries using 25 different measurements where comparative data is available.

 

In order to evaluate if an innovation gap exists between the EU and the U.S., the study creates a composite index aggregating 15 of the selected indicators. The size of the innovation gap has experienced a reduction every year from Scoreboard 2003 to Scoreboard 2007. The EU maintains a lead in four of the metrics: S&E graduates per capita, share of medium and high-tech manufacturing employment, trademarks per capita and registered designs per capita. In the 11 other measurements, the U.S. has the lead.

 

The U.S.’s advantage over the EU is lessening over the last several years in terms of broadband penetration rate, early-stage venture capital per gross domestic product (GDP), ICT expenditures per GDP, and triad patents per capita. On the flip side, the gap between the two is gradually widening in terms of public R&D expenditures per GDP and the share of exports considered as being high technology products.

 

The 2007 Scoreboard also assigns each of the 37 selected countries into four groupings based upon the value of their overall innovation performance. The top-ranked nations overall are Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Israel, Denmark, Japan, Germany, the U.K., and finally the U.S. The second tier is composed of Luxembourg, Iceland, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Canada.

 

Looking at the prospect for future growth, the report estimates these countries will remain set in these two leading groups, with only Luxembourg reaching the top tier in the immediate future. The rest of the countries fill in the bottom two groupings. But other countries in the lower tiers are on the move as well, as the study predicts the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Lithuania are on track to reach the EU member state average within the next 10 years.

 

This is the seventh edition of the Scoreboard since the first pilot study calculating a comparative innovation index was attempted in 2000. Since the pilot study, the number of indicators has risen from 16 to 25, and the number of included countries has increased from 17 (the EU15, the U.S. and Japan) to 37. The study allows the EU to compare its member states to its international competitors, which will be interesting to track as the EU attempts to reach its goal of having 3 percent of GDP dedicated to R&D by 2010.

 

The webpage for the European Innovation Scoreboard 2007 contains a clickable map that enables one to see the metrics for each of the selected countries and is available at: http://www.proinno-europe.eu/extranet/eis2007